


We Built Another World

by cjmarlowe



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Growing Old Together, Growing Up Together, M/M, Yuletide 2009, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 05:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One kind of a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Built Another World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spuffyduds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/gifts).



They hang the painting on the wall between the elegant, if sparsely-filled, bookcase and the Christmas cactus that swings from a hook in the ceiling, macramé plant holder straight from the seventies and his mother's crafty hands. It's been a long time since Duck's done anything like it, a long time since he's done _anything_ other than coat a deck chair or stencil out a banner, and it shows in the rough edges but Dan tells him that's just part of the charm.

They can see it from anywhere in the bedroom but they can see it best from the bed, almost like a window opening out onto the ocean where there are always soft waves and silver clouds and lichen-covered rocks sprayed with seawater.

Not everything from the Watch is a happy memory, but the painting makes it one.

It's just off-kilter, just enough that Duck feels the need to get up and fix it, and when he does he almost imagines that adjusting the painting will give him a better view, that it might reveal an airplane in the corner of the sky or a foot at the very bottom of the painting, someone or someones sitting on a rock just outside the frame.

No matter what happens now, they've left their footprint on the Watch, and no one can take that away no matter how hard they try.

Maybe he shouldn't be proud of it, but he is. For all its secrets and all its shame, it was theirs, it was something they made so they could be themselves. And growing beyond needing it, growing into someone who goes to town events with his partner and doesn't apologise, well, that just means the Watch was a necessary step towards becoming who he is.

Certainly it's worth memorialising in a painting, this painting, even if it's just for them.

"Come back to bed," says Dan, holding out an arm to him, and Duck knows he doesn't mean to sleep.

Duck would say he's getting too old for this, but the truth is that despite the faint ache in his bones, he's never felt younger.


End file.
